Using API-First Design for Applications and Websites

In today's development world, APIs (application programmning interface) have become a critical component in development and design. I think it is safe to say that APIs are the highway that connects everything together. Their are different API experiences in the development world and it is usually driven by development methodologies, teamso or some other factor that can influence your application or websites design decisions. At Expression, we believe that in today's cloud-native world, development should be based on API-first development. Similar to some other development platforms, Expression's development framework is built to support the developer experience by constantly putting the developer first and to create unified stack, workflows and capabilities that solve potential development problems and allow developers to build and complete project faster and easier. In using API-first design principles, Expression API is based on REST standards and comprises of numerous Resources available for use in Datasources, ServersideScripts and even HTTP.

For today's developers, they can pretty much do anything they can imagine through an API somewhere, regardless of the domain. If there is an API, Expression can connect to it. Expressions's goal was to allow developers to control every aspect of their project, and data, including how users see it, when users see and where users see it. A lot of traditional companies that have moved onto Expression quick see the advantages to API-first development. Many of these companies previously used a multi-team approach to different segments of the application or SaaS services and may have started building their mobile or web applications before looking at their APIs going as far as treating APIs as a side project in order to integrate 3rd-party companies or to integrate another project. This approach can create challenges down the road and creates an API layer that may or may not have bee properly build and tested during the initial design phrase. At Expression, we believe the better approach when building websites, applications or digital experiences is to have an already integrated API that allows a developer to build right on top of the API.

Using API first development gives developers the most flexibility and power to build a website, mobile app or SaaS service. From the outside, you put the developers interests first and then build right on top of the API. Another consideration of API first design is recognizing who is consuming the API? It's safe to say that for your project everything you do should revolve around the idea of your end user including using an API that is design to consumed by your application, services and users. Every decision you make, and every line of code that gets created, needs to understand that every functional requirement of your app, website or SaaS service will be met throug the consumption of an API. When you look even deeper, you also see that every UI is nothing more than a consumper of an API. You can learn more about API-first design and begin using it today on Expression for free. Just visit www.xpr.ca/start to start.